“There
is no need for anyone, outside the military, to own an assault
weapon. There is no need for anyone, outside of law enforcement, to
have a handgun.”

I
submit to you, sir, that nobody who writes the above sentence really
believes in the 2ndAmendment,
nor would that person really understand the purpose of the 2ndAmendment
in our system of ordered liberty.But
that is okay, because we, us gun owners of America, we understand the
2ndAmendment,
and we understand the state of guns in society much better than you
do, sir. If I may, let me enlighten you a bit. You write:

“Such
is the power of the NRA, the most dangerous lobby in Washington. By
standing in the way of any sensible gun control measure, they have
blood on their hands. Worse than the NRA, however, are the
politicians afraid to stand up to them.”

From
where do you suppose the NRA gets the power to be the most dangerous
lobby in Washington? The collective will of some four million
members, Americas who believe that guns are an overall positive force
in society, is the power of the NRA. Sure, gun manufacturers support
the NRA, but are are not gun company owners and stock holders also
citizens, free to support any cause and invest in any company that
they see fit? Not all of the anti-gun organizations combined has even
a tenth of the resources that the NRA can marshal in support of
American gun owners, and as a membership organization, the NRA acts
to support membership goals. And the chief goal is that no new gun
laws are necessary in the United States.

You
will find that gun owners in America support restrictions on firearm
ownership by certain prohibited classes of people, convicted felons
and mentally ill people. What we oppose is the imposition of gun laws
that we see only restricting law abiding gun owners, and failing to
accomplish the task for which they are intended. Indeed, even the
current regulations on the books often fall short of the goal. We
have now learned that James Holmes was under treatment by a
psychiatrist, but for some reason that did not trigger a flag on the
background check Mr. Holmes had to pass to obtain his weapons. And
there is not legal requirement to pass a background check to purchase
ammunition in any quantity. The 6000 rounds that is not at all an
unusually amount of ammunition. Many recreational shooters buy
ammunition in bulk to save money, and they can easily go through 1000
round per day, or more, if they shoot in a competitive match.

There
is another thing which you may be ignorant of, but which you must be
cognizant of it if you are going to comment intelligently about 2ndAmendment
issues: since 2008 gun ownership is a civil right, one that cannot be
abridged without the government having a compelling reason, and since
2010 that new civil right has been applied to limit municipal,
county, and state action as well as Federal action. While the limits
of the new civil right are still being defined in the courts, there
is one thing that I can tell you, and which may make you sad, there
is no way to prevent any non-prohibited person from owning a handgun.
Handgun bans are completely off the table since the 2008 Heller
decision.
You're just going to have to get used to it.

Another thing you might have to get used to is the realization that a
renewed Assault Weapon Ban may be unconstitutional as well. How could
that be? Well, compare the AR-15 rifle that Mr Holmes, reportedly
a Smith & Wesson M&P15, and another rifle, the Ruger
Mini-14. Both fire the same ammunition: 5.56mm NATO. Both have
detachable magazines. Both are reliable and accurate. Large capacity
magazines are available for both rifles. They are equally deadly
weapon in the hands of a monster like the Aurora shooter, and both
are reliable self-defense and sporting rifle in the hands to a
citizen. So, what is the difference? Cosmetics. The pistol grip,
muzzle brake, adjustable stock, and overall military appearance does
not make the M&P15 a more dangerous rifle than the Mini-14.
Another difference is that the Mini-14 never fell under the previous
Federal Assault Weapon Ban, and it would not fall under the one
proposed by anti-gun politicians. The inconvenient truth of the
matter is that the AWB is arguably unconstitutional in its previous
form, and broadening it to include rifles like the Mini-14 would make
the unconstitutionality argument much easier to make. The Supreme
Court of the United States also held in the 2008 Heller decision that
the 2ndAmendment
protected the right to own firearms “in common use”. Many
gun-right activist actually want the AWB to come back so that they
can sue in Federal court; it is an argument that they dearly want to
make. They think that they will win, driving a stake through the
heart of the AWB now and forever. Smart politicians like Dianne
Feinstein know this, so I would not expect them to seriously push for
a renewed AWB.

There
is more bad news for the gun control side, and that is the
proliferation of liberalized concealed carry laws in the United
States. The nature and scope of concealed carry laws is described in
this GAO report, Gun
Control: States' Laws and Requirements for Concealed Carry Permits
Vary Across the Nation, released just a few weeks ago. 7,787,000
people hold licenses to carry concealed weapons in the United States.
Of the states that have enacted shall-issue permitting laws, not one
has repealed the law after it went into effect, which seems to
confirm that people in these states like these laws. If you consider
NRA members to be the “hard core” of the gun-rights movement,
think of the concealed carry licensees to be the middle ground. These
people run the gamut of society, class, and politics, but they are
all people to whom the right to keep and bear
arms
is very important. So important that they have gone to the time,
expense, and effort to purchase a weapon, obtain the required
training, and complete the application process. These people do not
want to give up their right to carry defensive firearms in public
while they go about their daily business, so while the political
Independents and Liberals among this group may support other Liberal
causes, they will split from you on the more radical anti-gun
solutions, especially your assertion “There is no need for anyone,
outside of law-enforcement, to have a handgun.” These 7 million
would disagree.

We
now come, Mr. Press, to the most inconvenient truth of all for you:
there will be no more new gun laws passed in this country without the
cooperation of gun owners. Think about this for a while. Besides the
hard-core 4 million NRA members, and the 7.7 million concealed
license holders, there are roughly 70 to 80 million people who own
firearms, perhaps as many as 40 million of those owning handguns. Gun
control advocates used to be able to propose and pass restrictive
legislation because many people thought that guns were the root cause
of violence. That argument has completely fallen on its face with the
FBI reporting ever decreasing violent crime rates in the United
States at the same time as the NSSF reports ever more robust firearm
sales. The old arguments are hollow, so you must compromise with us
to get anything accomplished.

What
kind of compromise might be possible? Take you idea about background
checks for all firearm transfers. With the current state of the NICS
system, this would be not too onerous, and quite a few gun owners
would be fine with this, but we would demand something in return,
like national concealed carry reciprocity. If the idea of trading
differing regulations for more freedom to carry firearms frightens or
disgusts you, then I say get used to being perpetually frustrated and
disappointed with the state of gun laws in this country. As you
admitted in your column, the NRA is the most dangerous lobby. The gun
control lobby must compromise with us, or we will block everything
that they propose, and we'll probably win what we want in the courts
anyway, killing their ability to negotiate compromise legislation.
The time window for that is short, ten years or less, so instead of
blaming the NRA for everything, why not try to talk some common
senseinto
the gun control lobby?

Thursday, July 26, 2012

"In 2010, I drove 11,000 miles around the United States talking to gun guys (for a book, to be published in the spring, that grew out of an article I wrote for this magazine), and I met many working guys, including plumbers, parks workers, nurses—natural Democrats in any other age—who wouldn’t listen to anything the Democratic party has to say because of its institutional hostility to guns."

I think that the institutional hostility to guns of the Democratic Party is simply one facet of an institutional parochialism with which the Left imbues the Democratic Party. Far from being intellectual, tolerant, and diverse, the modern Democratic Party doctrinaire, intolerant, politically homogeneous, and increasingly resembles an ideological echo chamber of urban elites, labor union officials, and urban minorities that reinforce their prejudices against traditional American values.

Both sides in the gun debate must stop thinking that they are going to get everything they want without giving up anything. Frankly, the gun rights movement is holding ALL the cards at this point - both politically and legally. No new laws are going to be passed unless they agree. Gun control advocates need to recognize this reality.

Spot on! He goes on to describe some of the ways that gun control and gun rights sides might compromise. I am skeptical that the gun control side will compromise because most of them are True Believers who, while they might deny it, would prefer to eliminate all guns and think of tightening gun control laws as incremental steps to that end.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

In 1982 Senator Orrin Hatch commissioned a study on the history of the 2nd Amendment. The results of this study were published in The Right To Keep and Bear Arms. I have never heard of this report before, even though I have been paying attention to 2nd Amendment issues for some time, and I only learned of it in this article by Jill Lapore in the New Yorker, where she writes:

"The assertion that the Second Amendment protects a person’s right to own and carry a gun for self-defense, rather than the people’s right to form militias for the common defense, first became a feature of American political and legal discourse in the wake of the Gun Control Act of 1968, and only gained prominence in the nineteen-seventies. A milestone in its development came when Orrin Hatch, serving on Strom Thurmond’s Senate Judiciary Committee, became chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution. Hatch commissioned a history of the Second Amendment, resulting in a 1982 report, “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” which concluded, “What the Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear—and long lost—proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.”

This makes the report an important historical document in the development of social and legal thought about the right to keep and bear arms in America, and it helps place in context the RKBA in America today.

About Me

I am an Electrical Engineering graduate that has worked as a software engineer in the telecommunications industry and as a test engineer in the mass storage industry.
I have always has an interest in environmental issues, but am dismayed at the utter lack of scientific or technical knowledge expressed by many people involved in environmental causes. This blog is an attempt to address the deficiency.